DCMP on 
Dana Porter on 
Yesterday, Governor Ted Strickland ( I thought I voted for a Democrat) once again ignored mental health and addiction issues in his State of the State address.
Before the speech, Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher and Janetta King, Strickland’s policy director, spoke in a conference call with health and human-services advocates. The advocates were told that while they are appreciated, they would hear nothing from the governor about help for their struggling programs.
If you appreciate someone you do not slash their budgets. Substance abuse services have taken large budget cuts under Strickland, but mental health services have been decimated.
In the past two years, mental-health programs have been among the hardest hit by state budget cuts. As a result, thousands of people have been cut off from services from local mental-health agencies…
This is foolish. The research is overwhelming regarding treatment and prevention. It saves money in the long run.
Pamela S. Hyde, former Ohio mental-health director and newly appointed by President Barack Obama as administrator of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, said such cuts are costly in the long run…
…Hyde said $1,500 spent on mental-health and substance-addiction treatment can result in $11,000 in avoided taxpayer costs down the road. Typically, those costs result from emergency-room care, hospital treatment and imprisonment.
But Strickland is a psychologist and should know this. Maybe he was a really lousy psychologist and that’s why he became a politician.
Source: Mental-health advocates upset Strickland’s speech omitted them
Very well said. I swear that if you went back in time and laid out all the things that the governor has done (consolidating power in the executive branch, gutting education and services to the poor while refusing to raise taxes on the rich, etc.) to a reasonable person in February 2006, that person would respond, “Oh, so Blackwell must be governor.”
I often point to the public mental health system in Ohio as a prime example of rationed health care when it’s under government control. Those of us against Obamacare, like myself, don’t need to point to England or Canada to show examples of public health care rationing. It happens here in Ohio.
Governor Strickland is probably fully aware that individual counties can pick up the slack with property tax levies to support ADAMH boards, so it’s just a matter of passing the buck down to the local level. No matter which way it’s funded, though, it’s very difficult for patients to schedule appointments on a timely basis because of the large caseloads. Those who can afford to pay out of pocket for private mental health care are the ones who can see their providers on a much more regular basis without extra hassle.